Thursday, February 27, 2014

In the narrow, twisting streets of Hebron's Old City marketplace, one can see a strange site by looking overhead. Chain link fence and other heavy gauge wire covers the open area between the rooftops on either side of the street. The wire is necessary to protect the shop owners and customers of the markets from refuse. This trash-garbage, broken pieces of furniture, even large chunks of rebar-embedded concrete-has been thrown from the windows of a high rise apartment building that is situated next to the market. The high rise residents are settlers-hardline Zionists whose avowed purpose is to make Israel/Palestine 100% Jewish.

I decided to use portions of the fence in all of the pieces in this series, both as a visual reminder of the actual wire overhead and as a symbolic device to indicate the virtual prison in which the Palestinians of the occupied territories are forced to live. I also wanted to capture the everyday life of these people; a tailor working in the doorway of his shop, two women on an errand, people with a donkey loaded with belongings making their way through a checkpoint.

My methodology consists of several stages. I first designed the collages on my computer and when I had a mock-up of the piece, I printed out sections of the images on 80 lb. Paper. The images were then individually cut out and fitted together in the manner of a jigsaw puzzle, and adhered to the support. The completed pieces were then coated with a satin UV varnish.

All collages are available for sale. Please email me for prices and availability.